Meta freezes hiring for shopping team, Messenger Kids, and other products

Meta is pulling back its investments in a number of products, including the teams it spun up early in the pandemic to compete with Zoom and build shopping features, The Verge has learned. In addition to a hiring freeze for certain engineering roles, the company also recently paused the hiring of recruiters and low-level data scientists.

While the hiring freezes have caused employees to fear that layoffs are around the corner, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an internal all-hands meeting last Thursday that job cuts are not being planned. “I can’t sit here and make a permanent ongoing promise that as things shift that we won’t have to reconsider that,” Zuckerberg said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Verge. “But what I...

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